For angry migrant workers, NREGA offers little succour

"Why will someone do physical labour under MGNREGA for Rs 170-200 when they can earn Rs 300-400 doing the same work for a private contractor? MGNREGA is dead," says Jameel Akhtar, the mukhiya of the Kakila panchayat in Jagdishpur block in Bihar's Bhojpur district. He speaks to this reporter surrounded by a crowd of villagers who are mostly migrant workers, those who returned to the village after the 24 March lockdown that was imposed — with less than five hours notice — to control the spread of COVID-19.

The summer of 2020 didn't just witness a steep climb in coronavirus cases in India. Another number rose steadily - the number of households enrolled under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). From April to August, over 83 lakh new households joined the NREGA labour force by getting job cards, taking the number of families under the scheme to an all-time high of 14.36 crore.

The election-bound state of Bihar has the highest proportion of outward migration of workers in the country, and was most affected by the COVID-19 lockdown and the ensuing migrant workers' crisis. The crisis is also one of the major issues in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections, especially for the incumbent Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP government. The Election Commission has enrolled 6.5 lakh new voters over the last six months as part of the ongoing updation of the voters' list, ahead of the Assembly polls starting 28 October. Among them are an estimated 3 lakh migrant labourers who returned home during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Until June 2020, at least 32 lakh migrant workers had returned to Bihar. Since their return, the government mapped their skills for employment. The workers have no choice but to rely on NREGA for employment in their villages, given that they have lost their jobs due to the lockdown.

People's Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG), an independent body working on NREGA since 2004, tracked the progress of the Act in Bihar between July and August to provide some broad statistics from the NREGA Management Information System (MIS), such as the number of households that have completed 100 days of work, the number of households nearing completion of 100 days of work, amount of funds left with states, a comparison between work demanded and employment provided for select states.

PAEG noted that while the government claims to have provided employment to 34 lakh households — which is the highest in the last three years — only 2,136 households have completed a 100 days of work so far. In comparison, 33,000 households in Madhya Pradesh and 27,000 households in Rajasthan have completed 100 days of work. Except April, the number of households which were given employment up to August 2020 was at least 1.5 times more compared to each of the previous three years, the report noted.

At least 11.01 lakh job cards were issued in Bihar since 1 April, 2020. Of the 83 lakh job cards issued across India, 14.17 percent were issued in Bihar, the report added.

An angry, unemployed electorate

According to Jameel, the rules under NREGA are flawed and the Act benefits neither the labourer nor the employer. "Only a public representative knows how difficult it is to get people enrolled under NREGA. I became mukhiya in 2016 and I was eager to get youths in my village work under NREGA. So, I opened a small project and employed workers from the village. But the system is broken," adds Jameel. "The payment never comes on time. Why will a worker wait for five-six months for a paltry sum of money?"

This is not an isolated situation. This reporter travelled across eight districts to assess the ground situation and found that there was a deep disconnect between the state, the district and panchayat level officials, especially when it came to implementation of welfare schemes announced for the migrant workers during the crisis.

About 115 kilometres away from Jameel's village, Lal Mahto from Kartahan Bujurg panchayat in Vaishali district of Bihar is waiting for the borders of India-Nepal to reopen. "I get 0.63 paise more in Kathmandu compared to my friends who work in India," says Mahto, who belongs to the Extremely Backward Class (EBC) and has been unemployed since his return in March this year.

His mother, 50-year-old Krishna Devi sits near the temple shade carefully guarding the NREGA job card issued by the Bihar government in July this year. "We got a job card but never heard about any job after that," she says flipping through the booklet which has her and her son's name. The rest of the booklet, which is supposed to be a log of the jobs assigned and completed by the households, is empty. "We have been reduced to begging and seeking alms. Beggars have a better life. At least they don't pretend to be "workers" or "labourers".

Vaishali is one of the 32 districts in poll-bound Bihar where Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan on 20 June 2020 to provide employment to migrant labourers. The scheme was expected to provide some relief to migrant labourers who returned to their native states after having lost work. To give an estimate of the scale of the problem, as many as 24,19,052 labourers had returned from Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and many other states after the lockdown was imposed. Ahead of an election that is expected to be fiercely contested, the majority of Bihar's villages are teeming with a young and angry populace. The crowd comprises mainly young men (between 20-35 years of age). They are jobless, frustrated and they feel that the government doesn't even notice them till the elections are upon them.

Govt promises only on paper

"They have issued job cards, but where are the jobs?" asks 25-year-old Chandan Kumar Vidyarthi, a Mahadalit, who hails from Parsauna village in Saran district.

Chandan was working in Gujarat's Anjaan when the lockdown was imposed. Part of a group of eight men, Chandan found himself jobless and penniless after the private contractor who employed them said there is no work, since a lockdown has been imposed. "We sat without work and money for three months, trying to return home. But the condition is worse here, I think. At least outside, there is a guarantee that we will get some work and earn up to Rs 400 a day. There is absolutely nothing in Bihar," he says.

Parsauna is a Mahadalit village. Mahadalits are considered a subcategory of Dalits in Bihar and, together with the Dalits, make up about 18 percent of the state's population. In 2007, Nitish Kumar brought 20 most backward and deprived SC castes under one umbrella and christened the grouping as Mahadalit. He announced schemes and programmes for their economic and social upliftment. Nitish, in fact, was instrumental in Manjhi being appointed as chief minister of Bihar. "It has been five months since I returned. In these five months, we haven't received even a penny from the Bihar government. There are no jobs in Bihar. We have submitted the necessary forms to apply for a job and it has been a year. We are on the brink of starvation. We are living off borrowed money from neighbours. They are not even allowing us to return and resume work," Chandan added.

The fact that there is a vast difference between the official version of events and the ground reality, is interesting to note. Considering that migrant workers who returned to the state by June 2020 form a considerable chunk of the voter base, one would expect the government to be in crisis management mode by now. But residents of rural Bihar feel it makes no difference to the political class if workers live or die.

Elaborating on the government's apathy toward the poorer sections of society, 35-year-old Aditya , who is a farmer, asks how Rs 200 is sufficient for any family. "First of all, since the lockdown, there is no work even under NREGA. The floods have made things worse, but the government has no sympathy for us."

According to the farmers in Sonepur's Bakarpur village, the town mandi was shut down in April to enforce social distancing to control the spread of coronavirus. "Politicians and netas are arranging massive rallies. No one talks about social distancing then. But the strictest clampdown is on the poorest sections of society," says Aditya.

Farmers in Sonepur unanimously and quite bluntly dubbed the current government 'anti-poor' and 'anti-farmer'. "We read in papers "so many jobs created" in Bihar, where are the jobs? We need work, we don't have work. Administration defers every meeting, and asks us to come back later. We don't have a union. Our fields are ruined after the floods and MGNREGA is a dead scheme. The wages are extremely low and the payments don't even come on time. We are poor farmers and workers. We cannot wait for six months. Our families will die of hunger," says Pankaj Singh Parmar, a small-time farmer who used to grow vegetables on his 4-acre plot of land. He has been unemployed since May, and has a family of eight to feed.

(This article was first published at http://www.firstpost.com. Reprinted with their permission)